Switzer Doesn't Miss A Lick When Told Team Is Top Pick

May 12, 1986|By Larry Guest of the Sentinel Staff

It's usually great sport and lots of yuks to ask a college football coach about his team's being favored in Saturday's big game. Or, even better, about being picked to win the conference title or, better yet, the national championship.

His pulse quickens, his skin goes clammy and beads of blood break out on his forehead. I've seen football coaches on similar hot seats go so far in irrational reaction as to swear off chewing tobacco. One year it became my duty to tell new Notre Dame coach Gerry Faust that his colleagues attending a Citrus Bowl golf outing had welcomed him into college football by picking his Irish for the national title that year. At first, I thought the phone lines had gone dead. As you know, Faust never recovered.

Football coaches, by nature, prefer the underdog role. Even if they know their third team could send the sacrificial homecoming opponent to the Mayo Clinic for six weeks, they'd prefer us to believe only an ingenius tactical plan of X's and O's and an inspirational halftime talk will save the old alma mater. High expectations bring pressure from alumni. And alumni pressure produces all sorts of ills like hives, loopy backswings and unemployment.

Most coaches would rather be accused of setting orphanage fires than being tagged as a 24-point favorite. And picked to win the championship? They'd rather have NCAA investigators. Or Jan Kemp.

That's why I was fighting back giggles Sunday before a golf game with Oklahoma Coach Barry Switzer. At just the opportune moment, I could present Barry with the news that the straw poll of him and 35 other coaches at this weekend's Florida Citrus Bowl outing tagged his Sooners as landslide favorites to repeat as wire-service national champs.

Of the 36 coaches asked to list, in order, their top three picks to take all the marbles next season, 19 made Oklahoma their first pick. Giving the ballots a 3-2-1 point value, the Sooners polled 67 points. Alabama was a distant second with four first-place votes and 25 points.

At just the right moment (when Switzer had me 2-down) I broke the news and sat back, waiting for Barry's eyes to glaze over.

With that, he cracked another long drive down the center of the fairway. My Sunday Nassau was in big trouble. Ditto for Oklahoma opponents next fall.

''Oklahoma has so many good players, they may be first and second,'' Syracuse Coach Dick McPherson said.

''They've got more athletes than anybody in the world,'' said Ole Miss' Billy Brewer.

''They have more of everything it is you need to be good,'' Houston's Bill Yeoman said.

Indeed, Switzer doesn't shy away from ominous facts like 10 of his 11 offensive starters returning or eight defensive starters back or even that 39 of his top 44 players return from last year's national championship team -- Switzer's third since taking over at Oklahoma in 1973. Quite to the contrary. ''We lost only a tackle on offense, but the kid we'll have playing in that spot this year is even better,'' he says boldly.

At Oklahoma, you learn to live with high expectations. Since The Associated Press began taking preseason polls, seven teams picked No. 1 in August won the national title; four were Oklahoma teams.

Switzer had to coach 38 games at Oklahoma before he had to deal with a defeat. Living up to a legend like Bud Wilkinson has proven no insurmountable task. In Wilkinson's first 154 games as OU coach, he was 126-24-4. Switzer, now through 154 OU games, is an eerie 126-24-4. And during those first 154, both had one Heisman winner, two Outland winners, 80 conference victories and three national titles.

Nevertheless, Switzer is fully aware his Sooners will need to do more than pull on a tux and show up for the awards. There is a toothy schedule that includes seven 1985 bowl teams and a fast start with UCLA and Miami -- two national title contenders in their own right -- sandwiched around resurgent Minnesota in the first three games. ''We could be completely out of it after the first three games of the season,'' Switzer says.

But not likely. Not with clever quarterback Jamelle Holieway scooting always just out of reach to lead the offense and Butkus Award-winning linebacker Brian Bosworth pillaging on defense. Bosworth may pose a special problem at Oklahoma, where transcript scandals have surfaced.

Bosworth is a gifted, accelerated student who could graduate before his 1987 senior season. ''Maybe we'll get some professors to flunk him,'' Switzer said, laughing at the irony of his quip. ''Now wouldn't that be a switch for college football.''